1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an improved network data processing system. In particular, the present invention relates to an integrated application environment in a network data processing system. Still more particular, the present invention relates to mapping structured query language schema to application specific business objects in an integrated application environment.
2. Description of Related Art
In an integrated application environment, an integration server integrates different types of applications and shares business objects among these applications. An exemplary type of application is a structured query language (SQL) compliant application. Typically, SQL compliant applications are specific database applications, such as Oracle, a product available from Oracle Corporation.
When integrating SQL compliant applications into an integration broker, the SQL table structures need to be accessible, such that artifacts may be generated to abstract table structures. One way is to directly access the database with a JDBC compliant driver. By using the JDBC compliant driver, JDBC ODA can generate the artifacts. With the increasing popularity of extensible markup language (XML), table structures may be expressed in XML schemas, where a physical database connection is no longer needed. To generate artifacts from XML schemas, two major approaches have been taken.
One approach is by using an extensible markup language (XML) object discovery agent (ODA). XML ODA reads XML schemas and document type definitions (DTDs) for each table in the database and generates business objects when the database tables are not known or not readily available. After business objects are generated, the user has to manually edit all the application specific information (ASI) fields of the business objects to match the database application adapter expected information, for example, table name, column table, etc. Application specific information fields provides mapping of business object fields to corresponding field in the application specific data structure of the database application. This approach requires a fair amount of manual efforts to correct the ASI fields in the generated business objects.
A second approach is by using a database adapter ODA, such as a JDBC ODA, to directly draw definitions of database tables and relationship and generate business objects from these definitions when the database tables are known. Possible edits may be required to match deviations between the generated business objects and the XML schemas. In this approach, a database connection is necessary in order to access the database for creating the business objects.
While these approaches attempt to alleviate some problems of integrating XML schemas, significant manual efforts are required to fine tune the business objects in order to meet the database applications' expected information. In addition, these approaches fail to accommodate the variety of XML schemas annotated with relationships to the database tables and columns. Furthermore, there is no existing mechanism that accommodates database application version or vendor changes.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to have an improved method, apparatus, and computer instructions for mapping SQL schema to application specific business objects to be understood by integration broker, such that SQL schemas may be imported into the integration server regardless of the variety of schema annotations or database application version and vendor changes.